Thursday, March 17, 2016

Who was St. Patrick?

(Being a true son of the emerald isle -- well, mostly -- I repost this every St. Patrick's Day with some new things added each time to freshen it up.)

St. Patrick asks some excitable revelers whether they reallyneed quite that much green beer

St. Patrick was a real, historical person, though not all the stories we associate with him are necessarily true. He had quite an adventurous life, being enslaved as a lad by Irish raiders, then escaping years later and making his way back to his home in England. But despite that experience he returned to the land where he'd been held captive to boldly and almost single-handedly persuade the Irish that the God of the christians was kinder than the bloodthirsty spirits they were worshipping -- kind enough to die for them, rather than insisting they die for him.

That idea really clicked with the Irish and they became christian in droves, no fighting or bloodshed needed. In the process, sort of as a by product, the scholarly monks of Ireland ended up rescuing most of the learning and literature amassed by Greece and Rome. Ever read Plato or Plutarch or studied Eucilid's geometry? Thank (to a great extent) the Irish monks.

For more information on that exploit of Patrick's and other reasons we Irish are are so great, I heartily recommend Thomas Cahill's How The Irish Saved Civilization. If you can locate one, get the audiobook version by that well-known irishman, Liam Neeson , who truly reads it with feeling. Or, while swilling down mugs of green beer, take a listen to this reading of Patrick's autobiography.

In the meantime, I present you with this ancient and powerful celtic-christian prayer known as The Breastplate, possibly composed by Patrick himself.